On April 30, 1945, Hitler took his own life in Berlin. The capital surrendered to the Red Army on May 2. Breslau fell on May 6 after a brutal three-month siege. On May 7, German General Alfred Jodl signed the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Reims.
The ceremony was repeated in Berlin the next day with Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel. That should have been the end of the war in Europe. Yet on May 10, a massive pocket of German troops on the Baltic coast finally laid down their arms. Two full days after everyone else.
They were trapped in Courland, hundreds of kilometers from Berlin, cut off for over six months. Why were they still fighting? And how had they survived so long while the rest of the German army fell apart? Courland, known as Kurzeme, had been part of Latvia before the war.
In 1940, the Soviets occupied and annexed it, only to be driven out by the Germans in 1941. Latvia then fell under Nazi occupation as part of Reichskommissariat Ostland. In April 1944, the war returned with Soviet air raids. But the real blow came in July as part of Operation Bagration, a massive Soviet offensive aimed at reaching the Baltic Sea and severing Army Group North from the rest of the German forces.
The Soviet advance moved fast. Vilnius fell on July 13. By July 19, Red Army units crossed into eastern Latvia near Daugavpils. On July 30, Soviet forces reached the coast near Tukums.
If that gap held, the German position in Latvia would collapse. The ports of Liepāja and Ventspils would be lost, and the land connection to the Reich severed. The Germans launched a frantic counterattack and retook Tukums, but the brief Soviet presence left a trail of destruction. Civilians were shot, women assaulted, and suspected collaborators executed without mercy.
The Latvians knew exactly what awaited them under renewed Soviet control. Despite the brutality, Latvian units fought fiercely alongside the Germans, holding the line step by step until they were pushed all the way back to Courland. With the Red Army less than fifty kilometers from Riga, German General Ferdinand Schörner ordered an evacuation on September 26. Equipment was hastily transferred to Kurzeme.
But the Soviets kept pressing. In a brutal assault on Klaipėda, also known as Memel, they tried once more to reach the coast. On October 10, the decisive moment came. The Red Army reached the Baltic Sea near Palanga.
The land connection to Germany was severed forever. Riga fell soon after. On October 12, retreating German units blew up the two main bridges over the Daugava River in a massive explosion. It slowed the Soviets, but it also sealed the fate of tens of thousands of Latvian civilians who were trying to flee, leaving them trapped on the wrong side of the river.
While some German forces prepared for a last stand in the city, others withdrew toward the final bastion of Kurzeme. Rearguard units fought desperately, suffering heavy losses. The German army was now fully encircled. Hitler declared the region an impregnable fortress: Festung Kurland.
With their backs to the icy Baltic Sea and a frontline stretching roughly 170 kilometers, around 400,000 German, Latvian, and foreign troops were trapped, along with 230,000 civilians and approximately 150,000 refugees. The only connection to the outside world was through the ports of Liepāja and Ventspils. Opposing them were about 429,000 Soviet soldiers. Hitler dreamed of using Courland as a launchpad for a new offensive on the Eastern Front, an Ardennes-style surprise.
It was pure illusion. Germany no longer had the resources. All they could do was defend. And defend they did.
Between October 1944 and March 1945, the Soviets launched six major offensives against the pocket. The third, in December 1944, was the most devastating. Stalin had expected victory in weeks, but German resistance proved far tougher than anticipated. Soviet losses mounted so heavily that a strict news blackout was imposed.
Only after the final collapse in May 1945 did the world learn what had happened there. The defenders were not all Germans. Around 10,000 Latvian troops of the 19th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS fought alongside them, as well as Scandinavian volunteers and ethnic Germans from across Europe. But tensions grew.
Many Latvians were fighting for their homeland, having joined the Germans out of hatred for Soviet rule. They quickly realized independence would never come under Nazi domination. Latvia itself was slated for German colonization. On both sides of the front, Latvians faced each other in battle.
In some sectors, fighting simply stopped. Desertion and refusal to fight became increasingly common. Life for civilians inside the pocket varied dramatically. In rural areas, survival was possible.
Near the frontline, it was total devastation. In the ports, supplies still arrived, but so did bombs. Refugees flooded the cities, and aid organizations collapsed under the strain. For many, escape was the only hope.
After the war ended, some tried to cross the Baltic in small fishing boats bound for Sweden. The Germans held out for over six months, not just because of their position, but because many soldiers had been fighting since 1941 and believed they were buying time, holding the Soviets back from Germany itself. As the Red Army pushed deeper into the Reich, units were gradually evacuated from Courland. But by the spring of 1945, even the evacuation routes collapsed as key ports fell.
The end came with Germany’s surrender on May 8. But Courland, cut off from communication, did not receive the orders until May 10. It became one of the last German formations to surrender in Europe. The cost was staggering.
Around 117,000 German soldiers were killed, and roughly 90,000 Soviet soldiers as well. Nearly 190,000 Germans were taken prisoner. Many would not return home until the early 1950s, some not until 1955. Even after the surrender, fighting continued in the forests.
German stragglers and anti-Soviet resistance fighters known as the Forest Brothers carried on a guerrilla war for years. For them, the war did not end in 1945. And for the German soldiers who surrendered in the pocket, the end of the war marked the beginning of a long ordeal. While many German POWs in the west returned home relatively quickly, the Courland fighters vanished into the Soviet system.
They were marched east or transported in overcrowded freight trains to labor camps. Many ended up in the Gulag, forced into brutal labor in mines, forests, and construction sites, facing starvation, disease, and exhaustion. Many did not survive the first winters. The first group returned around 1947–48, but most only came home in the early 1950s.
The last survivors were not released until 1955, following a diplomatic visit by West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer to Moscow. One notable surrender had already taken place earlier. On May 4, 1945, at Lüneburg Heath, the first major regional capitulation paved the way for Germany’s final surrender.
I visited that site in Germany a few years ago and made a video about it.
